If it is difficult to separate the sexual from the merely imitative, no less difficult may it be to distinguish psychosexual processes from others. If a child lavishes caresses on mother, governess, or sister, it may be difficult to discover definite characteristics enabling us to distinguish whether the motive is or is not sexual. But, generally speaking, when a child exhibits an intimate and caressive affection for its mother we shall not incline to think of processes of the sexual life. We cannot dispute the truth of the statement made by various authors, that in these caressive inclinations sexual elements are intermingled. But this talk of the intermingling of sexual sentiments arises in reality only from the fact that neither on theoretical nor on practical grounds are we in a position to draw a clear line of demarcation between the sexual and the non-sexual; and we must avoid stretching this idea of the intermixture of sexual elements beyond the fact that a scientifically based practical distinction is not always possible.
We have to admit that above all in the mind of the child the various feelings comprised under the idea of "sympathy" (friendship, affection for parents, love of children, sexual love) cannot always be marked off each from the other after the manner of provinces on a map. Even jealousy, which is often regarded as characteristic of the erotic sentiments, does not necessarily possess a sexual basis. The boy, in his love for his mother, is jealous of his father, jealous of one of his brothers or sisters, jealous even of a dog to which his mother pays attention. How little jealousy may depend upon a sexual motive, may be learned by the observation of animal life; a dog becomes jealous if its master takes notice of another dog, or even pays attention to his own children. In children, more especially, the extension of jealousy is far greater than it is in adults. Whereas in adults this sentiment is chiefly, if not exclusively, associated with the erotic feelings, in children this is by no means the case. In the child, jealousy may clearly be associated with every possible variety of sympathetic feeling. For this reason, it is impossible for us to draw a distinction between sexual and other psychical processes, simply on the ground of the associated manifestation of jealousy.
On what grounds, then, can we decide that certain processes are of a sexual nature? In many instances, only the subsequent development will show that one process was sexual, another non-sexual. If one day a boy, embracing, as often before, his girl friend, has an erection, and then perhaps endeavours to draw her towards him so that her body presses against his genital organs, or even has an ejaculation with a voluptuous sensation, we may assume the influence of a contrectation impulse, which has existed for some time, but only now has for the first time been localised in the peripheral genital organs. On the other hand, if in the same boy when he hugs his mother no peripheral sexual manifestations occur, either now or subsequently, we must assume that in the earlier embraces of his mother there was no sexual element. But no such simple solution of the difficulty is really possible. It may happen that in the case of feelings originally sexual their further development is inhibited. A boy might experience sexual sentiments towards his mother; but it is very probable that in such a case convention, education, and perhaps also the very frequent association with his mother, would repress the growth of these sentiments. This criticism is a sound one, and in my opinion the materials are lacking to enable us to overcome its force. For why should certain processes occurring in childhood—for example, a boy's impulse to caress his mother—be regarded as non-sexual; and yet the same processes subsequently be regarded as sexual, merely because they ultimately become associated with the phenomena of detumescence? Take the case of a boy seven years of age; he loves and cuddles his mother; he is drawn also to a girl friend of the same age as himself, and kisses her with equal pleasure. The boy grows older, and after some years begins to have definite erections when he embraces and kisses his friend; but nothing of the kind occurs when he embraces and kisses his mother. Now, have we any right to assert, simply owing to the subsequent appearance of these peripheral manifestations in the one case and not in the other, that originally, when between the boy's inclination towards his girl friend and his inclination towards his mother no clear distinction could be drawn, the former was sexual, the latter non-sexual in nature?
The dilemma is unanswerable, unless we admit that, in the child, sympathetic feelings, which we shall subsequently be able to classify without difficulty, are, when they first appear, not always susceptible of any such differentiation; and that for this reason we are just as little able to distinguish a boy's love for his mother from has non-sexual friendship for a little girl, as we are able to distinguish either from a sexual love for another girl. To a very acute observer, certain slight indications may in many cases give some idea of how the matter really stands; but we are here largely concerned with subjective interpretations, rather than with distinctions that are objectively demonstrable. The difficulty of drawing distinctions is all the greater in view of the fact that in the case of non-sexual feelings sexuality constantly plays a certain part. Our sentiments are complex, and compounded of many and various elements; sexual contrasts play their part in family relationships; and it is not by pure chance that harmony exists by preference between father and daughter, and between mother and son. This sexual contrast tends to manifest itself in all displays of family affection. Thus, many men will tell us that in early boyhood they loved to kiss their mother and sisters, rather than their father and brothers. In my experience, the analogous sexual contrast does not show its effects so clearly in the case of women as in the case of men. I cannot be certain if the differences I have observed in this respect depend merely upon chance. It is certainly a fact that men, in their confidences to me, have remarkably often reported childish memories of the working of this sexual contrast. And conversely, many homosexuals have assured me that in boyhood they kissed their father with much greater pleasure than their mother.
Our diagnosis will, naturally, be greatly facilitated in those cases in which the phenomena of contrectation are plainly reflected to the reproductive organs. I, at any rate, believe that in practice such an association suffices completely to establish the diagnosis. We can, indeed, recognise this also in the dream life, at least as soon as the first nocturnal emissions have occurred. In the first edition of my work on Contrary Sexuality (Berlin, 1891), I drew attention to the fact that those affected with perverse sexuality commonly have perverse dreams; and Näcke has further discussed the significance of sexual dreams for the diagnosis of sexual perversions. In children also we shall find in their sexual dreams, especially when these dreams have begun to be accompanied with seminal emissions, a certain assistance in the delimitation of their sexual sentiments from other manifestations of sympathetic sentiment. But this aid in diagnosis is not available till comparatively late in childhood, i.e. not until ejaculation has already begun. Even before this epoch dreams may have a sexual character, and may be conditioned by sexual processes. But practically, before the occurrence of ejaculation and orgasm in dreams, an exact diagnosis is opposed by so many difficulties, that little of value can in this way be gained.
In this chapter we have examined the considerations that must guide us in our study and diagnosis of the sexual life of the child. It is, naturally, an important question, whether signs exist pointing to an abnormal development of the sexual life, and more especially to the growth of a sexual perversion. This matter has been discussed with considerable detail, and I need not, in conclusion, add anything to the emphatic warning previously given, against making apparently perverse manifestations in childhood the basis of a definite diagnosis or prognosis.